Cathy’s Kitchen: Lemon and Poppy Seed Muffins

Tags

baking, Lemon and Poppy Seed Muffins, Muffins, Testing Recipes

Every couple of weeks I try out a new recipe from one of my Cook Books. Last Saturday I did my first attempt at Lemon and Poppy Seed Muffins, here are my notes:

Recipe Origin: Lemon and Poppy Seed Muffins from Scrumptious Muffins by Marc Grossman

Date baked: Saturday 1st July 2017 on a sunny afternoon whilst Orla napped after tiring her out at the Barrowford Lifestyle Festival in the morning.

Difficulty Level: There quite a few steps in mixing the ingredients in the right order, and a couple of extra ingredients that I didn’t expect like chopped up pear and Greek yogurt but each step was simple and the recipe was easy to follow. As you can see in the photo below, the kitchen did get messy!
Results: Beautiful, perfectly golden muffins. The pear pieces and yogurt made the muffins really moist and the lemon icing had a great tangy taste.

Who Ate them: I took eight with me to a friend’s house that afternoon as a housewarming gift. They in turn had baked brownies and scones to share with us so we had an afternoon of indulgent eating! I took the rest to my parents house the next day and we ate them after my Mum’s Sunday Roast.

Would I make them again? Absolutely! And I may have to do it soon, I have half a jar of poppy seed left over!

Cathy’s Kitchen: Paul Hollywood’s Breakfast Rolls

Tags

baking, Breakfast Rolls, Cathy's Kitchen, Paul Hollywood

Today I had a go at tackling one of the Bake Off legend’s recipes, his breakfast rolls. These are like cinnamon roles except they are savory and stuffed with tomato, bacon and mushrooms instead of cinnamon.

This was a big commitment in the day. With two proves, the preparation and baking time easily exceeded three hours, which makes me skeptical about how you would ever make these fresh for breakfast. You would have to get up at 6am to make them ready for 9!

The initial stages went well, I made my dough and after a couple of hours of proving had it laid out like a pizza with it’s breakfast themed filling.

 

 

Then I had to roll it together and slice it up…which is where things got messy! I should have left a border of dough around the edges to avoid spillage, but I didn’t, so I had quite a bit of cleaning up to do!

By the time I was putting the rolls into the baking trays I had serious doubts with how this bake was going to turn out.They were random sizes and were leaning over at odd angles. They did not look promising!

But twenty minutes later they looked much more appealing! All golden brown and puffed up. I let them cool down for a bit and then went back to sample one, and they tasted….

a bit bland. I couldn’t believe it. Three hours of work and they tasted just like your standard bacon sandwich, but rolled in to a ball! What a waste of effort! Next time I will just buy a loaf from Morrisons and have a standard bacon butty. Much less work; same good taste!

Maybe over people have had better luck than me but I don’t think this will be a recipe I will be repeating. Sorry, Mr Hollywood!

 

Cathy’s Kitchen: Crunchy Jumbles

Tags

baking, biscuits, Carole Clements, Crunchy Jumbles, The Cook's Encyclopedia of Cooking

The baking impulse has struck again. This was a quick and easy recipe that still took me all day to do because I squeezed it in around baby care, (five months old and still does not nap!).

The recipe for Crunchy Jumbles biscuits is in the Cook’s Encyclopedia of Baking by Carole Clements, which you can find here on Amazon. This book also has my favourite recipe for chocolate chip brownies, which is a blog post for another time!

Like I said, this is a very easy recipe, sugar, butter, eggs, flour all mixed together with the good old Kenwood. Then I got to do the fun bit of adding in a mound of rice crispie cereal and chocolate chips.

There really was a lot of rice crispies, in fact if I were to do the recipe again I think I would reduce the amount of rice crispies and increase the amount of chocolate chip -more gooey, less crunchy!

Here is how the mixture looked before being spooned out on to the baking trays – and yes I may have had a smidge of the batter before it went in to the oven, just for taste testing purposes, of course!

As I was in a hurry to get these into the oven, (Orla was getting grumpy!) I made no effort at all to get regimented sizes or shapes. Fortunately for me, these biscuits suit a rustic appearance!

They came out huge! I really should start doing smaller portions on the baking trays. Ah well, if you’re going to have biccy might as well make it a big one!

I really love the golden colour they turned in the other, and some of them still were a bit gooey in the middle, which I love!

And the taste is quite nice too, they taste kind of oaty and syrupy – even thought they don’t have syrup or oats in them! Perfect to have as a supper treat with a glass of milk!

Ah bliss!

Cathy’s Kitchen: Chocolate Eclairs

Tags

Bake Off, baking, Cathy's Kitchen, chocolate eclairs

I’ve been fancying having a go at this recipe for ages! I love chocolate eclairs, any cream cake really! The idea that I could be making them myself ready for any indulgent Saturday morning is very appealing.

The only trouble is that newborn babies aren’t very accommodating to baking ambitions. I attempted this bake yesterday but only got as far as buying the ingredients and pulling the mixer out of the cupboard before Little Miss needed attention and the bake was abandoned for another day.

Today I fared better with Orla’s nap time. Although I still had a mishap. On my first go this morning I left the eggs out of the dough mixture! So instead of lovely eclair bases I had strange soft bread stick type things. Still, they were OK dipped into tomato soup for lunch!

In the afternoon I was much more successful, although when I first piped out the dough I doubtful about how this was going to turn out. They did look a bit pathetic!

But after being in the oven for 20 minutes they were much more eclair like! I mean they lack the uniformity and tidiness of a bake off entry but you can tell more or less what they are.

I then had to put a small slit in the side of each one before putting them back in the oven to dry out for five minutes. I was nervous about this bit but it was actually quite easy to do, as was chopping them in half once they were done.

Then it was on to the fun stuff, dipping them in chocolate icing and filling them with hazelnut whipped cream. I was excited to taste the hazelnut cream, made by adding nutella to double cream, but I have to admit the flavour didn’t really come through at all. Will have to adjust the balance next time.

In fact I ended up with lots of chocolate icing and whipped cream left over! There seems to be enough to fill another batch. A couple of the small eclairs fell apart as I was laying them out so I dipped them in the icing and ate them straight away. Maybe that could be the next food thing…eclair dip instead of s’mores. You have shredded bits of dough and a bowl of icing and you just dip and eat away!

Anyway here is how the finished product looked. I’ve just had one now and can report that they are very sweet, light and yummy! Now do I be good and find some people to share them with or do I go mad and eat as many as I can before Rob comes home??

Pastel Kitchenware

Tags

baking, Baking spoons, Cupcake, Mixing Bowl, Pastel Kitchenware, Sweetie Jar

Baking has slowly become one of my favourite weekend activities over the last couple of years. There is something very satisfying about getting up on a Saturday morning, pulling out a brand new recipe to try and getting to work. It makes your whole house  smell lovely for the day and you then get tasty goodies to see you through the weekend!

Baking is always fun but it is an even nicer activity when you have pretty things to bake with! I realised over the weekend that I now have a small collection of pastel baking-ware and thought I would share it with you.

First up is my pretty blue mixing bowl! This was a gift from my Mum last year that she picked up for me after I mentioned that I didn’t have a mixing bowl. She’s pretty wonderful in that way! I love this shade of blue, it is so happy and bright, like summer skies! It is also a really good size and sits comfortably in the crook of your arm when you are doing some serious whisking!

This cupcake-shaped container was also a present. This time from Brenda who acts as an honorary Grandma to me! It is wonderfully kitsch and compliments the blue mixing bowl perfectly. We use it a sweetie jar, and it can hold a whole lot of sweets!

 Finally this spoon set was also a gift from my Mum. She bought them the same time as the mixing bowl. It is only now as I write this that I realise that my entire pastel kitchenware collection is made up of gifts! Just goes to show how good it is to have women of great taste and generosity in your life! I really love these spoons and I want to keep them pristine so I only use them for baking. The wooden spoons we use for general cooking look nothing like these! They have black singe marks and are slightly stained orange in places from too many curry sauces! My baking spoons stay hidden in a drawer and only make an appearance when there is sugar, butter and eggs to deal with!

So that is my entirely-donated and much loved pastel baking collection. Somehow their light and bright colours make weekend baking just that much more cheerful!

 

Cathy’s Kitchen: Christmas Cinnamon Rolls

Tags

baking, BBC Food, Cathy's Kitchen, Christmas, Christmas Cinnamon Rolls, Cinnamon Rolls, Paul Hollywood

In anticipation of the Christmas season I was scrolling through my Christmas Pinterest board last week looking for ideas. This is the one time of the year that I can use my Christmas board so I want to fit in as many projects as I can before January rears its disapproving head!

I was surprised to discover that most of my Christmas pins are food based. Aside from the obvious Christmas dinner staples: turkey, Christmas pudding, brussel sprouts, there is a vast range of cookies, cakes, drinks and buns that lend themselves to the festive season.

First up on my pin board was a batch of cinnamon rolls. Rob was very enthusiastic about this idea, his mum used to make them when he was little so they hold a lot of good memories!

I had a scan round the internet and in my cook books to find a workable recipe. Paul Hollywood has a version but that included hours of proving time and sultanas. Rob is not a fan of sultanas.

In the end I went back to the good old BBC Food website. This cinnamon rolls recipe was much quicker and fairly simple to put together.

First of all I mixed the dry ingredients together and in a separate bowl mix the butter, eggs and milk. Then I combined the wet and dry ingredients together and did a very quick bit of kneading work.

I laid out a big rectangle of baking paper and sprinkled it and my rolling pin with a generous portion of flour.

I then had to roll the dough into a rectangle. This proved difficult. The baking paper kept sliding with the rolling pin and a couple of times it threatened to slip off the counter. Next time I must remember to weigh it down properly. I also struggled to roll a rectangle, instead I kept getting a perfectly shaped oval. Eventually I asked Rob to put the camera down and come rescue it. He deftly turned my oval into something more rectangular whilst I made up the filling.

The filling consists of melted butter, sugar and cinnamon. I would recommend using more butter that the recipe stated as you want something that is going to spread easily.

Once mixed together I poured the filling out in the centre of the dough in a long line down the middle. This made it easier to spread out evenly.

Now for the spreading I tried a few different tools: first I used a pastry brush that worked really well until the bristles started falling out into the filling. I then tried to use my fingers but they stuck to the dough so then I swapped to a plastic spatula that worked fine. Spatula is the way to go!

We got the filling spread all over the dough and was pretty pleased with how even it looked. Then it was time to roll it up! My lovely husband remembered that a contestant had used the baking paper to roll a swiss roll on the Great British Bake Off, so we tried out the same technique and it works really well. Get the roll started then lift the far edge of the backing paper and pull it gently towards you and it will roll the dough for you!

We ended up with this prettily formed log. I then had to divide it into eights. I grabbed hold of a ruler and scoured lines where I was going to make the cuts. Then I used the sharpest knife we have to cut it up.

I put the pieces in a round baking tin that was greased and lined. You don’t have to do it like this but I found that putting one in the middle and the rest around the edges formed a nice flower shape once it was done. I glazed the rolls with a little bit of milk on the top and then into the oven they went.

35 minutes later they were looking good and the house smelt of Christmas: well it smelt of sugar and cinnamon which is pretty much the same thing!

I let them cool and got to work on the icing. The BBC food website called for a cream cheese icing but I hate cheese, even in cream form, so I went back to Paul Hollywood to see what icing he used. Mr Hollywood recommended a lemon icing which sounded good to me. It was really easy to make: icing sugar, bit of water and grated lemon ride.

Then I got to do the fun part and drizzle the icing on the rolls. Let me tell you that this is the part where you can easily get carried away. It is such fun to spoon the icing in crazy lines across the buns that it takes real discipline to stop. I didn’t want to completely obscure the spirals of cinnamon in the rolls!

And voila! Here are the finished products.

I really liked the taste of these. The rolls are a strange mix of something that is a bit bready and a bit cakey all at once. The icing on top is sweet with a little zing from the lemon and the cinnamon filling is deliciously warming. They make a perfectly naughty breakfast treat with a cup of coffee, or if you are a child like me; a cool glass of milk!

Becky’s Cake Boutique

Tags

baking, Becky, Becky's Cake Boutique, cake, Lancashire, Minion Cake, Rainbow Cake, Small Business, working from home

I have this friend called Becky. She is a mum, she started her own business in the middle of a recession and she makes the best cakes!

Whatever your cake dream may be, I have yet to hear of an idea that Becky can’t turn in to a sugary reality.

Would you like a pink princess castle with towers packed with marshmallows?

Or would you prefer a cake shaped like your gorgeous little Westie puppy?

Or what about a cake with an entire rainbow inside? It’s all possible!

I have to admit that when I heard that my friend was quitting her day job to start a cake baking business I was 80% thrilled and 20% nervous. I knew her cakes were something special but in a climate where we hear of failing businesses every day it would be a tough challenge. Plus, with everyone scrimping and scraping to get by, how many people would want to spend extra cash on cake of all things?

Well, clearly I underestimated the appeal of exceptionally good cake and just how clever Becky is. 18 months later and Becky’s business is thriving. Her Facebook page has over 2200 likes and the orders are coming in thick and fast.

Deeply impressed by her achievements I asked her if she would mind doing an interview for Red Rose Style. It was a new experience for both of us as this is my first interview. We met at Becky’s house and had a good chat whilst Becky’s eight year old son Ethan sat nearby, quietly playing, to begin with, at least!

The first question I had to ask was how did Becky’s Cake Boutique start?

Becky: I started in July 2012. Lots of people were telling me to do it. I didn’t really like my job at the time so I thought that I didn’t have much to lose. If it all went wrong I could always get another job. But I am doing OK.

Cathy: You have 2000 likes on Facebook, that is more than OK!

Becky: Actually it’s 2290 likes now. Which is good to say it’s just been 18 months. In fact I just passed the 18 month deadline. I normally do a competition to mark the milestones but this one sneaked up on me.

Cathy: I enter all the competitions but I’ve not manage to win yet! It’s very cruel!

Becky: Blame the children, they pick the winners.

Cathy: I need to start bribing Ethan

Becky: I used to write out all the names and the children would pick the winners out of a hat but that takes too long now. So I scroll through the names and they yell for me to stop.  I get hundreds of entries now and it all helps, all those shares. We get new likes with every competition and some of those people won’t bother but some might have a look at the page and place an order.

Cathy: So how did you learn to bake this well?

Becky: I’ve always baked. My dad taught me how to when I was little. He still bakes his own bread today. So I got it from him. But I never decorated a cake until it was Scarlet’s first birthday [2010].

The first cake Becky ever decorated.

I wanted to try and decorate a cake myself so I did some research and got hold of all the things I needed. It was a two tiered one. I just put them on top of one another. I didn’t dowel or anything. I would do them a lot differently today.

I was surprised that Becky had only tried cake decorating in the last few years. You don’t have to look far on her Facebook album to be blown away by her creations.  There are so many different designs and each one is personalised for the customer. I asked her if she had known that she was creative before turning to cake decorating.

Becky:  I did art at GCSE and I’ve always enjoyed drawing. I like drawing cartoon characters; I probably still have a book of drawings upstairs somewhere. I used to copy images of Winnie the Pooh characters

But I wouldn’t know where to start if I had to make up an image from scratch. I like to look things up and use them as a guide.

At this point Ethan wanted to join in.

Ethan: For my birthday my mum made a three layer cake with Batman and Spiderman at the bottom, then Moshi monsters, and at the top it was angry birds! It was Yummy!

Now looks are all well and good but we know what really matters about cake is the taste. And I can personally vouch that Becky’s cakes taste as good as they look. Style and substance by the truck load!

She has a plethora of amazing flavours to choose from. My favourites are: Mint Aero, White Chocolate and Raspberry, Nutella, Chocolate Orange, Sticky Toffee Pudding, and Baileys! The list goes on and on and is always being updated. So I had to ask her how she keeps coming up with new flavours.

Becky: My newest one is White Chocolate Maltesers. I just saw them in a shop and thought I would try it out. It’s what I do, I just look out for new flavours to try. It helps if it is a flavour that I really like.

Cathy: What have been some of your favourite cakes to make?

Becky: I always enjoy doing the children cakes. I think they are really fun and they use lots of colours. And I like doing the cartoon based ones, like the Minions. I’ve got orders for more Minion cakes coming up, one with a Liverpool top. I don’t think they are going to go out of fashion for a while.

Ethan: Have you got a picture of my first Birthday cake?

Becky: No, I didn’t do yours. I didn’t bake back then.

Ethan (looking shocked): What? You just bought a random cake?

Becky: Yeah, I did

After a pause to recover from this shocking revelation he changed track.

Ethan: Have you showed her Peter’s cake?

We looked at Peter’s (Becky’s husband) three tiered birthday cake which has a football base, with a pizza balanced on top with a pouring can of beer as the top layer. It is a remarkable feat of cake engineering.

Ethan: I had a bit of everything. I had the cup, I had the football and the pizza. They were all delicious!

Cathy: What flavours were they?

Becky: They were chocolate mud cakes, one tier was white chocolate. Chocolate mud cake is sturdier and better for building with. If it was just a vanilla sponge it wouldn’t hold the shape as well.

We needed to come to a close now so I asked my final question and the one I had been most curious about asking.

Cathy: What advice would you give to someone who was thinking about taking their own hobby and turning it into a business?

Becky: I think they should do it. Especially if it is something they enjoy. That is the best bit. It doesn’t really feel like a job because I enjoy it that much.

It is hard because everything is new, especially working for yourself for the first time. You have to look everything up.

Word of mouth is the best advertising. Don’t pay for advertising if you can avoid it. At the beginning I bought a page in a leaflet but I didn’t get anyone saying they had seen the advert so I don’t think that works, or it didn’t for me. But Facebook has been great!

So yeah, people should do it!

It was at this point that Peter yelled out ‘Becky! Disaster!’ from the kitchen. He had knocked the top off the salt shaker whilst shaking it resulting in a light dusting of salt that covered the entire kitchen. Attracted by the noise, four-year old Scarlett got out of bed and came downstairs to say that she wanted a drink, although I suspect she really just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

It seemed to be the right time to leave.

I said my goodbyes and got into my car marveling at Becky’s energy to juggle the art of being a mum  with her blossoming but demanding business. It occurred to me that in both roles Becky has a real fun-loving approach that shines through every one of her creations even down to the smallest cupcake. Maybe that is why they taste so good?

If you would like to see more of Becky’s cakes or to place an order you can check out her Facebook page here.

Go on treat yourself!

Cathy’s Kitchen: First Attempt at Macaroons

Tags

baking, Great British Bake Off, Ladies book of Baking, macaroons

Is anyone else having Great British Bake Off withdrawal? I must be, because the last time I was in TK MAX this pink and glitter covered book leaped out at me and demanded to be purchased immediately.

After leafing few it a few times I decided to have a go at making macaroons. These seemed to appear every week on Bake Off, and although I can’t remember ever eating one, they always looked delicious.

Here is what they should have looked like:

Beautiful right? So I whipped up the mixture and put it in the oven. And this is how the came out 10 minutes later:

OK, not smooth and shiny, more cracked and burnished. Think I may have had the oven to hot. Nevertheless I got Betty Crocker’s icing out and got to work. We already had the icing in the house so it seemed silly to make more from scratch. No it’s not cheating!

Here are the finished results:

Not quite up to Paul and Mary’s standard, but they do have a certain homemade appeal, right? As for the taste, they are sweet, almond-y and chewy. I have no idea if that is what Macaroons are supposed to taste like. But that is how mine taste. I guess I need to go raid a Bakery and find out how the professionals do it! But for now I am going to box these up and take them round to my parents for our evening snack as we watch the long-awaited Doctor Who 50^th Anniversary episode! Saturday’s don’t get better than this!

Cathy’s Kitchen: Victoria Sponge

Tags

baking, Baking mistakes, cake, cream, recipe, Victoria Sponge Cake

A Victoria Sponge is meant to be the simplest cake recipe there is. It is as much as a British staple as crumpets, scones and afternoon tea. And, until yesterday, I had never made one.

I used the Granny’s Victoria Sponge recipe from the BBC Food website and was delighted to see how simple the instructions were. I had everything I needed already in the kitchen except for double cream which was very easy to get.

Once I had all my ingredients measured and lined up on the kitchen counter I got to work.

 I mixed my ingredients together, using the food processor for mixing the sugar, butter and eggs. Then I folded the flour in by hand.

I split the mixture between these two identical cake tins and smoothed it out as much as I could. Then I placed them in the in the pre-heated oven side by side, and managed to burn my little finger at the same time. Which I was very brave about and did not whine all afternoon that my finger was sore!

Once the cakes were done I pulled them out of the oven and let them cool on the counter. The hole on the top of the nearest cake is from when I poked it to see if it was done, before it was ready. But as that was the bottom layer I didn’t think a hole would matter.

After about 20 minutes, I whipped up the double cream. I spread a generous layer of jam on the cake, then added the cream. I put the top layer of the cake on and sprinkled it with icing sugar. There was some spillage around the edges which I tried to neaten up with a little spatula. I didn’t get it perfectly neat but I was still pretty pleased with the final results.

I went to go locate the husband who was cleaning his bike outside and get him to come and admire my first Victoria Sponge Cake. By the time we returned to the kitchen something terrible had happened….

 

The cream had melted!

In my eagerness to finish the cake I had not payed enough attention to the instruction in the recipe that said to let the cake cool ‘completely’ before adding the jam and cream. Fatal mistake!

Regardless of the mess, we each had a slice and the cake actually tasted pretty good. I was especially pleased with the texture and taste of the sponge which is where I normally have trouble when baking.

I stored the cake in the fridge in the hope that the cream would stay fresh and took it to my parents this afternoon as a pudding to go with our Sunday lunch. Happily my family ate it up and didn’t seem to mind the presentation flaws. So this experience taught me two valuable lessons:

1. Always let a cake cool completely before adding cream

2. You can always count on family to tuck in to your baking creations

 

 

 

Cathy’s Kitchen: Biscuit Bowls

Tags

baking, biscuit bowl, cookie bowl, food, pudding, recipe

Today I used some left over biscuit dough to make a very cute desert for me and Rob. First I added some white chocolate drops to the dough and squished it all together. Then I rolled it flat.

I then grabbed a muffin tray, turned it upside down and greased two of the bowl shapes. I moulded the dough around the tray and put them in the oven at gas mark 4.

About 10-12 minutes they were ready to come out. There were a few holes but they still had a definite bowl shape.

 

I added a scoop of frozen yogurt to each bowl and a handful of blueberries and voila! Desert is ready!